As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software resources that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Grid computing is a method of increasing processing power by using available computing resources within a network environment. When a user is not using an information handling system that is coupled to a network, substantially all of the resources of the information handling system are recognized as being available to be used by a grid management system. The grid management system can use the computing resources of the information handling system as additional processing capacity to perform processing tasks as requested by the grid management system. When the user needs to use the information handling system, the tasks being executed for the grid management system are suspended, and the resources of the information handling system are returned to the user's control.
To initiate the process, an agent program can be loaded on the user's information handling system that performs a set of tasks that are requested by the grid management system. Then, when the information handling system becomes available, the grid management system supplies data over the network to the information handling system. The agent program processes the data and sends the results back to the grid management system over the network. The grid management system then sends new data for processing on the information handling system. This process often occurs within the user context (i.e. the user is logged in to the user's information handling system), and thus the agent program can access substantially all the resources of the information handling system, including storage devices (e.g., hard drives).
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.